• Question: Have you ever gone abroad to do research and if you did were the facilities any different?

    Asked by Sir Anton the 1st to MarthaNari, Jonny, Hannah, Alison on 23 Jun 2015. This question was also asked by 601utec38.
    • Photo: Jonny Brooks-Bartlett

      Jonny Brooks-Bartlett answered on 23 Jun 2015:

      Yes. The 2nd picture down on my profile page (with 4 people in – /lutetiumj15-zone/profile/jonnybrooksbartlett/) was taken during my time in Hamburg.
      I went there to do what I love doing – shooting crystals made of proteins with X-ray beams. The facilities were a little bit different. They didn’t have the same robots as the place in the UK (Diamond Light Source) but their computer programs were written very well.

      I think it really depends what type of research that you do but in general, I didn’t find it too different

    • Photo: Alison Whitaker

      Alison Whitaker answered on 23 Jun 2015:

      I once went to Winona State University, which is in Minnesota, USA. This wasn’t really for research, but like an exchange trip when I was a student. The facilities were really great. I also visited the Mayo Clinic in Minneapolis, a massive private research hospital. They had Miro artwork on the walls, underground carpeted tunnels, Wi-Fi everywhere (before we had Wi-Fi in cafes in the UK). It was incredible!

    • Photo: Martha Havenith

      Martha Havenith answered on 23 Jun 2015:

      Hey Sir Anton, I’ve now worked in the UK, Germany and the Netherlands, and I’ve visited labs in the US. The equipment is more or less the same (after all, you do need to do more or less the same experiments). But the way people work together can be different. For example, here in Holland people seem to share more equipment across labs, instead of all buying their own. In my London lab there was also just very little space, so all the equipment was stuffed into small rooms… probably because of the crazy rental prices in London! 🙂

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